Friday, April 27, 2007

"In 1938 the Roosevelt administration suggested that Jews seeking a homeland might settle in Alaska. It's a remarkably boneheaded idea, but Michael Chabon takes it up with gleeful intelligence in The Yiddish Policemen's Union...grand fun, in a Job-meets-Rodney Dangerfield kind of way...The texture of the book, its northern gloom, its smell of herring and salt air, and its metric hop (Chabon brilliantly renders the feel of Yiddish his characters speak) are part of its enormous pleasures. The other part is a subtler thing: It is Chabon's affection, his fondness and even yearning for a people, the European Yiddish-speaking Jews, half-imagined, half-remembered, paid homage here by their recreation at the center of a world that in reality they long ago departed."

Don't miss Michael Chabon's author event at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Mon., May 14 at 7:00 pm.